Dir - Brea Grant
Overall: MEH
This contemporary psycho-biddy thriller from the Blumhouse Television division takes a stab at revitalizing a throwback genre, but it does so with a modern day sensibility that is dour and straight-faced instead of knowingly campy. Almost entirely set at a spacious and tacky Nashville mansion that is inhabited by Katey Sagal's Norma Desmond stand-in, Torn Hearts has the right type of production design to examine the usual motifs of showbiz bitterness that comes with advanced age, intensified by sibling rivalry and other cliches that are dished out in the naturally dramatized mythology of the hard-drinking and hard-living, competitive country music scene. The attention to detail is on point, but issues pervade elsewhere. Sagal is perfectly cast with the vocal chops and intimidating presence to sell herself as eccentric country music royalty, but she underplays things to a point where the ridiculous script never comes to proper life. Said screenplay by Rachel Koller Croft is front-to-back implausible with its title duo band, (played by Abby Quinn and Alexxis Lemire, respectfully), behaving in insultingly loose and idiotic ways in order to move the hilarious plot forward. Unfortunately, director Brea Grant never lets us in on such hilariousness, with an icy cold presentation that only highlights the absurd story in place of notifying the audience that we are also supposed to be amused by it.
Dir - Ben Jagger
Overall: MEH
A Western adaptation of Nanami Kamon's novel of the same name, Room 203 is too hack-ridden in its presentation to impress, but it at least has some decent performances from its two leads. This is taking into account that their dialog is laughably tripe at worst and just adorably lazy at best, coming off as the kind of stuff written by people who have seen too many horror movies and have their own preconceived notions of what young, single college girls sound like without actually knowing any. Even worse though is the story itself which has a lame supernatural entity residing in a mysterious hole in a wall that comes to life when somebody puts on a necklace or something. We also have a dorky asshole landlord that is clearly up to no good, a cute boy who is an aspiring journalist and doomed from the moment that we meet him, plus some ominous glass paintings that lead to looking things up on the internet. Both Francesca Xuereb and Viktoria Vinyarska give the generic and uninspired material more than it deserves though, coming off as a believable and likeable best friend duo despite the screenwriting's tripe efforts. Jagger's stylistic approach sticks exclusively to B-movie tactics, (constant jump scare punctuation, constant ominous music, grimy visuals, etc), which merely makes this a competent if forgettable waste of time.
Dir - Kurtis David Harder
Overall: MEH
Canadian filmmaker Kurtis David Harder's first American movie Influencer is a topical one that plays off of both the dubious fears of identity manipulation via deepfake technology, as well as the type of detachment that can befall those whose entire persona is predicated on their social media presence. The former is a comparatively more prevalent theme than the latter, but Harder and Tesh Guttikonda's screenplay has concocted an icy cold villain whose on-going identity theft scheme could be motivated by a jealous need to live through another's internet following and adoration as much as it is propelled by the need to crush such an artificial lifestyle. Cassandra Naud's antagonist is certainly benefiting from her malicious actions at the cost of others, but there is enough ambiguity here to make this more than just a depressing look into sociopathic tendencies. This could be seen as either a positive or a negative since the characterizations are undefined to a point that the audience has to fill in the gaps, making it ultimately impossible to have any sympathy for the person that we are stuck with on screen for most of the time. Not that such sympathy is necessary and despite some plausibility errors and a mixed bag of an ending, the film hints at more than it spells out in a way that stays intriguing.
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